JOANA CRAVEIROUnsee

Unsee

a short performance about a country occupied by another.

you cannot unsee once you have seen.

aja monet

it was a on journey.

the plane didn’t stop at that country’s airport, it stopped at a different one.

that country wasn’t on the map.

But, if we went through checkpoints and walls and other borders,

we got there -

to a part of a country that had once been whole.

he said, write everything now, don't wait,

write it while it's still hot.

and I did.

actually, I wish there were no reasons to do this performance.

but there are,

there still

are.

Joana Craveiro

#ceasefirenow

#artistsagainstgenocide

Text, conception, and interpretation: Joana Craveiro
Assistance, collaboration: Henrique Antunes
Production: Teatro do Vestido
Support for artist residencies: Largo Residências - Quartel do Largo do Cabeço de Bola.

Support: Alkantara, A Piscina, Biblioteca Municipal do Barreiro, BOTA, Carmo 81, Casa do Comum, Cooperativa Mula, Coletivo pela Libertação da Palestina, CRL - Central Elétrica, dISPAr, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - NOVA FCSH, Gira Sol Azul, ISPA, Sismógrafo, Teatro do Bolhão.

Joana Craveiro is playwright, director, actress, teacher, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She is the artistic director of Teatro do Vestido (which she co-founded in 2001) and coordinator of the BA in Theatre at the Escola Superior de Artes e Design, Caldas da Rainha. She holds a PhD from Roehampton University, London. Her creative methods rely largely on ethnographic practices and oral history. Some of the issues on which she has worked and researched include the relationship between historical events and their representations in the present, as well as the collection of memories and life stories, and the poetic and affective cartographies of cities. She develops a creative and combative pedagogy that helps us think about a world free of totalitarianism, xenophobia, misogyny, and structural racism. The theater she stages is political, documentary and poetic. She is a member of the network of European playwrights, Fabula Mundi, and an associate researcher at the Instituto de História Contemporânea da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (IHC/NOVA).

Teatro do Vestido is a theater collective founded in 2001 whose first play, Tua, premiered at Galeria Zé dos Bois. Its main working methodologies are the writing of original dramatic texts, the search for alternative performance spaces, the observation of reality, ethnographic research, and oral history. With artistic direction by Joana Craveiro, and through collaborative processes, the company is constantly looking for new ways of making autobiographical, political, engaged, and poetic theater. The ethical, social, and pedagogical dimensions have been part of the company since it was formed in 2001 and have been expressed in the multiple projects developed over its more than 20 years of activity. The company has always worked on the theme of memory and its relationship with society and with each person’s life, turning its theater into a blend of autobiography and deep reflection on the surrounding reality. The company has been trying to re-signify the practice of political and documentary theater today. The poetics of cities, of deserted spaces, of transit and changing spaces; the close and engaged observation of everyday life; fieldwork, the collection of memories and life stories; historical memory, and the creation of various communities as the company passes through - all these aspects are the methodological and artistic hallmark of Teatro do Vestido’s work. In recognition of this, in 2012, the Portuguese Association of Theatre Critics described Teatro do Vestido as offering “an activity that is open to all forms of art, attentive to all citizens and curious about everything that goes on in the world in which people live.”

In collaboration with